


and it’s peaceful in the deep, cathedral where you cannot breathe

by goreds



Category: Frontier (TV 2016)
Genre: A little bit of blood, M/M, baby yoda is in so why not baby murder boyfriends, still decided to use that warning for that reason though, there's not really rape in this it's just implied that it's happened to a character in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21961453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreds/pseuds/goreds
Summary: Cobbs kills for Samuel. Samuel lets him.
Relationships: Samuel Grant/Cobbs Pond
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	and it’s peaceful in the deep, cathedral where you cannot breathe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MasterofAllImagination](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterofAllImagination/gifts).



1\. 

Cobbs knows he’s in over his head, perhaps head over heels. He’s all of fourteen, and while he’s never had any trouble killing before, he’s never killed for another person.

The other person? Another boy, taken advantage of by an older man on the canal boat that they all boarded in Cincinnati, heading to New York. The boy hasn’t grown to the extent that Cobbs has, and Cobbs feels bad for towering over him, as he was already bullied by that disgusting older, much larger man. Who Cobbs just strangled to death.

The boy looks at the dead man with wide, bright blue eyes, before looking at Cobbs with a weird...smile on his face. “Pond, right?”

Cobbs finds himself nodding, before offering the other boy a hand to get off the deck. Their eyes meet as the younger boy looks up at him, blue facing blue. The boy tries to straighten his clothes, but they’re torn and dirtied. The boy tries to correct his mussed-up dark red hair, before taking Cobbs’s hand to shake it.

“Thank you. My name’s Grant. Samuel Grant. That brute was...well. Thank you.”

Cobbs almost wants to bow his head in the regal young man’s direction, and he really doesn’t know why. “Anytime.”

Samuel looks at the dead man, face contorted in pain. “Really? Anytime?” The strange smile returns to his face.

And Cobbs knows he’s been hooked.

2\. 

Cobbs and Samuel arrive in New York a few weeks later. The rest of the voyage, Samuel mostly talks, while Cobbs quietly listens. The young man is fairly open; he traveled from the backwoods of Kentucky after several years of living in an orphanage, which he only ended up in after his mother brutally killed his baby brother. He tells the story with a serene quality in his voice, as if he’s dealt with the death and moved on. Cobbs isn’t entirely sure that’s true, considering the amount of ale the boy swallows whenever offered it.

Cobbs drinks too, but he can never seem to put it away like Samuel can. One night, after a little more drink, Samuel admits that the man Cobbs had killed had been, in some ways, his benefactor, and that he had taken advantage of Samuel before, it had just been the first time someone else had been witness to that fact.

“So... you didn’t want him dead?” Cobbs says quietly, their faces in shadows, with only a lantern lighting the deck.

“Oh, no. I very much wanted him dead. I wanted his money. And now I have it, and he’s gone. You made sure of that.” He pauses, with another smile. “Do you think you could teach me? How to kill?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Then, “Why not?”

“Because. It’s not something you really learn how to do. It’s something you can either do, or you can’t. The fact that you didn’t kill your...benefactor before I came along tells me you can’t kill.” It’s the most he’s said to Samuel the entire trip. He hopes he doesn’t put him off too much.

But it doesn’t seem to. Samuel just looks at him in defiance. “Maybe someday, Cobbs.”

3\. 

With the benefactor’s money, Samuel and Cobbs get a room above a tavern in a shady part of New York. Samuel said on the trip up the canals that he wants to become a businessman, perhaps in fur trading. The benefactor was in business related to fur trading, although Samuel wants nothing to do with the benefactor’s former business except to keep the money the man was carrying on him. Cobbs and Samuel, with some difficulty, had heaved the man over the side of the boat, a current burying him in the deep of the Erie River.

Samuel collapses on the one bed in the room as soon as they get upstairs. “I never thought we’d get off that fucking boat.”

Cobbs sits down on the other side of the bed. “It wasn’t so bad. There was something...comforting about the rocking.”

Samuel snorts. “Maybe for you. It just made me feel sick, all of the time.”

“That was probably the ale.”

“You think I drink too much, don’t you, Cobbs? I’ve seen it on your face.”

Cobbs chooses his next words carefully. “I think...we both enjoy drink. You just enjoy it more than I do.”

Samuel just nods at this, accepting it. He then yawns, closing his eyes. He’s sound asleep in a matter of minutes. Cobbs watches as the smaller boy breathes in and out. Occasionally he makes moans or cries in his sleep, and Cobbs feels a tightness in his stomach, like he wants to protect him from anything else that could hurt him, but Cobbs knows he can’t possibly protect him from everything.

Samuel wants to be a man of the world, after all. And there’s no saving him from what horrors the world will inflict upon him. What horrors the world has already inflicted upon him. Cobbs just keeps watching Samuel, and he realizes he’s been doing this for the whole night as the sun begins to come up and shine through their window. Samuel stirs a little, groaning, but he doesn’t wake.

Cobbs lays a hand on Samuel’s arm. “Don’t worry. I’m here.”

4\. 

Five years later, Samuel is moving up the ranks of the fur trading business, while Cobbs does odd jobs. But mostly, Cobbs keeps an eye out for Samuel. Samuel has the habit of making other men mad, especially men not as refined as he is. And since Samuel has a predilection for drink, he ends up in taverns, a little drunk and in arguments with bigger men. Cobbs would say angrier men, but he knows how angry Samuel can get. Samuel might be the angriest of them all.

Not that he’s ever inflicted his anger on Cobbs. Oh, no. He’s had flashes of anger, like that night a long time ago on the canal boat when Cobbs suggested Samuel would never murder someone else.

But Samuel still has never murdered anyone, to Cobbs’s knowledge. Cobbs has killed again for Samuel, though. At least...three times, he thinks? Two of them were in defense of Samuel, when some drunk men he got into a fight with tried to jump them in an alley on their way back to their little room they now share above a store, having moved away from the tavern room. Cobbs, with a new pistol bought by Samuel, shot them both cold.

It was a night murder, in another sketchy part of town, a murder of two drunks. No one ever came after the two of them, and New York is not known for its strict law enforcement.

The third one, though, was by Samuel’s direct request. Cobbs didn’t hesitate. Some man had insulted Samuel’s...tastes, rather directly, and he had also threatened him with some form of mutilation. So Cobbs did what he had to do. Well, maybe what beyond what he had to do. The killing wasn’t pleasant.

Cobbs isn’t sure if Samuel has realized that he shares the same tastes. One for other men. Samuel’s never asked, and Cobbs has never offered. He wants to, though. He wants to kiss Samuel on what must be lips that taste like ale, or rum, or sherry, one of the three. Samuel’s not picky, so long as it’s drink. Cobbs worries, but he knows he can’t, and shouldn’t do anything about it, if he values their friendship. Besides, Cobbs has been indulging a little more now, too.

One night, he breaches the subject of their mutual tastes with Samuel. Maybe not so delicately. They’ve both been drinking, of course.

“You’ve never been with a woman, have you?” Cobbs winces; that came out wrong. But Samuel just smiles crookedly at him.

“Neither have you. Or at least as long as I’ve known you, you haven’t.”

Cobbs stares at Samuel and his lips and his exposed collarbones, thanks to his robe. “I’m not interested in them,” he says softly but also with a heavy feeling of something sitting on his chest.

“Neither am I. Maybe blame my...strained relationship with my mother, I don’t know. No, I suppose I wouldn’t do that. I wasn’t interested even as a young boy.”

“Young boys usually aren’t interested in anyone,” Cobbs says, with a soft chuckle.

“I was. At the orphanage. It was in a mission run by Jesuits. One of the priests. He didn’t show any interest in me, and he certainly didn’t do...anything to me, but--” Samuel stops short of finishing his sentence. He doesn’t trail off, he just halts.

“I see,” Cobbs says.

“How long?” Samuel suddenly says.

“What?”

“How long have you wanted me?” Samuel says this casually, as if he’s used to men chasing him. Cobbs supposes he is.

Cobbs decides to tell the truth. “Ever since the boat. Ever since I killed the first time for you.”

Samuel gives a hearty laugh. “That’s a long time to carry a torch, dear Cobbs.” He rises from his chair and strides over to the other man. He grabs him by his shirt and looks up at him, noses nearly touching, lips inches apart. “I suppose we should reward your loyalty.” And he kisses Cobbs, deeply, with Cobbs kissing him back.

Cobbs realizes he’s bitten Samuel’s lower lip after he’s done it, when he tastes salt and copper in his own mouth. Cobbs breaks off the kiss, touching Samuel’s bloody lip with one of his fingers. “I’m...I’m sorry.”

Samuel merely takes the finger and tastes the blood. “I didn’t really notice, to be honest.”

“Still...”

Samuel shushes him, candlelight dancing in his eyes: “Keep going, Cobbs.”

Cobbs does so.

5\. 

The War for Independence starts not long after that. Samuel and Cobbs have never been much for politics, so they barely noticed the fires beginning all around them. Cobbs enlists, because he supposes he’s good at killing, and that’s what a war needs. Samuel wants to go with him, but Cobbs refuses to let him. He knows Samuel wouldn’t be any good in a war.

They don’t see one another for nearly six years after Cobbs leaves. Cobbs has since grown a beard and has a more vacant look in his eyes than ever before. The horrors of war were more than he anticipated, even considering his own experiences.

They meet in New York, again, the day the British Army leaves the city for good. Cobbs honestly didn’t think he’d ever see Samuel again.

But Samuel’s standing in the crowd when Washington and his army march triumphantly into the city. Cobbs spots him of course; there’s no one more fashionable than Samuel, no one who stands out more.

Samuel sees him too. He rushes to Cobbs, ever gracefully, and it’s clear he wants to embrace him but doesn’t, since they’re out on the street for all to see. Cobbs sees women embracing their long absent husbands and betrothed, kissing them deeply, and he very much wishes he could say damn it all and kiss Samuel right then and there. But there will be time for that.

“We’re moving to Montreal,” Samuel says, with a certainty.

“We are?” Cobbs says with a small smile.

“The fur trade is booming there. I’ve had enough of New York. Of fighting. Of wars. Time for something new. If you agree to come, of course.” Samuel’s look is dangerous, now.

Cobbs has a feeling he can’t protect Samuel from what’s to come. But he didn’t protect Samuel for nearly six years, and he seems like his usual self.

A new city. A second chance.

They could use that.


End file.
